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New dean named for College at Southwestern

FORT WORTH, Texas (SWBTS) – Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary trustees elected a new dean of the College at Southwestern (CSW) during their fall meeting, Oct. 21.

Steven W. Smith, currently assistant professor of preaching and associate dean for the professional doctoral program at Southwestern, will assume leadership of CSW on Jan. 1, 2010.

Smith, who earned his Ph.D. in Communications from Regent University in 2003, will also serve as CSW’s first professor of communications.

“We’re very delighted to have Steven Smith as the new dean of the College,” said Southwestern president Paige Patterson. “He brings a degree in communications that fits perfectly within the curriculum that we have established. Second, his relative youthfulness will make him very popular with students. He has shown great administrative skills in the assignments he has had as head of the Doctor of Ministry program. So, we are confident that this is going to be of great benefit to the college.”

The College at Southwestern was started in 2005 and provides accredited Bachelor of Arts degrees in Humanities and Music. Students are prepared through their studies to respond to culture, own their faith and spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ in any ministry context.

Smith’s passion for shaping the next generation of ministers was seen in the Summer 2009 edition of the Southwestern News, the seminary’s alumni magazine. He was chosen as a faculty profile in part for his role in shaping and guiding Master of Divinity “preacher-boys” in fulfilling their calls to ministry.

“This is not about you,” Smith told his students. “The pulpit is never a place to showcase rhetorical device. If there’s anything in you that is drawing attention to yourself, in so much that it is, it’s drawing attention away from the text. If you draw attention away from the text, then you draw attention away from Christ.”

Prior to his time at the seminary, Smith served as pastor at Salem Baptist Church in Richmond, Va., and associate pastor at Hillcrest Baptist Church in Dallas.

Smith’s first book, Dying to Preach: Embracing the Cross in the Pulpit, has just been released.

Smith earned his Master of Divinity from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1994 and his Bachelor’s in Communication from Liberty University in 1989.